Million-dollar compensation packages for financial CEO’s with poor performance records that will be paid due to loopholes in the Congressional bailout of Wall Street are a waste of money and human capital.

CEO’s who are walking away from the Wall Street meltdown are being rewarded with million-dollar compensation packages while the American taxpayer shoulders the financial responsibility of protecting companies, workers, and the U.S. economy itself. Why are millions of dollars of taxpayer money slated to line the pockets of Wall Street executives who have failed at their jobs?

Legislators and private citizens have cried ‘foul’ and have succeeded in stopping the flow of dollars...to a degree.

Wait Out the Bail Out
Banks that receive an equity infusion from the Federal government will be bound by some general guidelines on paying their top five executives. There will be no golden parachute or rich severance packages offered, and companies will have to pay more taxes if an individual's compensation exceeds $500,000.

The fear is that once the crisis passes, so will the restrictions...again. As an example, let’s look at the Congressional legislation that limited the tax deductibility of cash salaries to $1 million, for example. It led to an explosion in stock options used as compensation and even higher total payouts. It’s generally believed that although the compensation ‘caps’ are politically prudent, they probably won’t have much real impact. Companies will simply wait out the bail out restrictions.

The Human Factor in the Bottom Line Equation
Especially troubling is the lack of oversight and internal corporate governance. While acknowledging that this is not true in every company, most CEO’s are overly focused on the bottom line, completely ignoring the most important factor that goes in to keeping that figure healthy and robust...the human factor.

No single man or woman at the top is solely responsible for the success of a company. Instead take a look at the joint effort of leaders, executive management teams, managers and the people (workforce) who make things happen together. Yet, statistics show that CEO’s of large U.S. companies averaged $10.5 million each in total compensation. That’s 344 times the pay of the average U.S. worker.

Even more outrageous is the fact that when things go wrong, the finger points down the ladder, never up. It occurs because of an imbalance in checks and balances. CEO’s and the ‘executive suite’ have the power to limit transparency and oversight. They do and create a calculated culture of ignorance within business that provides a safety net in the form of blame-shifting.

The results on Wall Street are “excessive compensation packages for executives who have squandered their companies and their ‘human capital.’

Illumination and Communication
The solution is in corporate social responsibility and improved communications at all levels of business. Like the money they earn for their employers, employees themselves should be held in high esteem, handled with care in an atmosphere of transparency, dignity and personal empathy.

Managers who are unsure whether they have a corporate culture that fosters trust and respect should be encouraged to work with human resource departments to ensure the growth and well-being of a company’s human capital. HR can play a big role in making sure that the corporate mission is clearly communicated up and down ‘the line'. They can also examine where things went wrong and why, as well where future improvement should be enforced.

Perhaps most importantly, given current realities, human resources must be given the ability to curb...or at the very least question...excessive compensation packages that are currently approved by the recipients, themselves. In a nutshell, we need to ask someone other than a foxy CEO to guard the corporate hen house.